President Obama and Mitt Romney are expected to shift the focus of the presidential campaign back to the economy this week after spending much of last week sparring over foreign policy following the attacks and unrest in Libya and Egypt.

The president will travel to Ohio on Monday, where he plans to announce that the administration will challenge China at the World Trade Organization for illegally subsidizing exports in its autos and auto-parts sectors, contending the practice creates an unbalanced playing field for domestic manufacturers and leads to U.S. jobs being outsourced.

Autoworkers, their families and neighbors are an important Ohio voter constituency. Obama’s campaign emphasizes how the White House helped rescue General Motors and Chrysler, saving and adding jobs in places like Lordstown. While Democrats and some experts say the bailout may have saved the entire domestic industry, Romney opposed the government’s extensive role, which he and fellow Republicans say resulted in the government picking winners and losers among factories, dealerships and worker pensions.

The White House notes that the auto parts industry directly employs 54,200 people in Ohio and that the overall automotive sector, including associated industries such as steel, plastics and electronics, accounts for some 850,000 jobs — or 12.4 percent — of the Buckeye State’s total employment.

Romney’s pivot back to domestic concerns includes a pair of new television ads and a speech Monday to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles.

In one spot, titled “The Romney Plan,” the GOP nominee talks up his policies for strengthening the middle class. “Trade has to work for America,” Romney says. “That means crack down on cheaters like China. It means open up new markets.”

Mitt Romney, sensing an opening in the Middle East mess and catching flak from conservatives for giving too little detail about his policy plans, is rolling out a new and broader strategy to make the election a referendum on “status quo versus change,” chief strategist Stuart Stevens told POLITICO.

The shift, which is to include much more emphasis on Romney’s policy prescriptions, means he is scrapping the most basic precept of his campaign. From the time he began contemplating running again after his loss in the 2008 primaries, Romney’s theory of the case has been a relentless and nearly exclusive focus on the listless economy.

But with polls showing Obama for the first time moving clearly ahead in important swing states– most notably, Ohio–Romney advisers concluded they had to make a painful course correction.

Still, the Romney’s economic message is expected to be at the center of his pitch to Hispanic business leaders in Los Angeles.

“No one is exempt from the pain of this economy, but the Hispanic community has been particularly hard hit,” the Republican nominee will say according to prepared remarks. “While national unemployment is 8.1 percent, Hispanic unemployment is over 10 percent. Over two million more Hispanics are living in poverty today than the day President Obama took office.”

Romney will also pledge to work with members of both political parties “to permanently fix” the country’s immigration system.

The Obama campaign released a web video Monday ahead of Romney’s remarks accusing him of trying to cover up his past positions in order to appeal to Latino voters. The two-minute video is a parody of the ABC show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” and includes lines like “Can Romney cover up his belief in self-deportation with a bold new wallpaper choice?”

President Obama won 67 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2008, and recent polls show him with a more than two-to-one advantage over Romney heading into November. Margins like that could be devastating to the Republican in states with large Hispanic populations such as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, and explain the reason for his renewed outreach this week.

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The Obama campaign on Saturday released a television ad about the economy, with a cameo from former President Bill Clinton arguing that Mr. Obama should be re-elected to take the country “forward.”

It popped up Saturday at 7:21 a.m. on the NBC affiliate in Portland, Maine, according to tracking by NewsHour partner CMAG. The station reaches television viewers to the west in swing state New Hampshire.

Within a few hours of each other Friday morning, the campaigns also both released negative Spanish-language spots in Orlando, Fla.

DATA-DRIVEN CAMPAIGNS

On Friday’s NewsHour, Hari Sreenivasan talked with Sasha Issenberg about his new book, “The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns.”

Issenberg walked through how campaigns can learn about you through basic consumer information and the ways voter behavior is influenced. Watch their conversation here or below.

54382Sasha Issenberg on 'Winning Campaigns'Hari Sreenivasan and Sasha Issenberg discuss the author's new book "The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns."2012-09-11 13:34:00disabled2277859468FnDoRNV4i_Itrue

Christina will be hosting a Twitter chat with Issenberg on Wednesday. Submit your questions to #victorylab.

“This election is going to determine whether or not the very moral fabric of our country will be upheld or whether it will be torn apart,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., told the gathering.

Ryan came out to a room on its feet, but soon after beginning his speech,= protesters from the crowd yelled, “Corporations are not people,” before being ushered out and over-shouted with chants of “U-S-A.” Another pocket of hecklers interrupted later as well, but most of the viewers seemed pleased with his speech — even one man in colonial garb occasionally waving a tricorner hat in agreement.

Social issues did not take a backseat in the rhetoric. Besides lauding the Catholic Church and Catholic Charities, Ryan attacked President Obama for “never once [lifting] a hand” to change abortion laws. In contrast, Ryan called Romney ” a modest man with a charitable heart, a doer and a promise-keeper.”

In response to Ryan’s remarks, Obama for America spokesman Danny Kanner issued a statement hitting on Ryan’s budget. Kanner wrote that it was “a budget that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said failed a ‘basic moral test.'”

Ruth Marcus, filling in for Mark Shields, said she found Romney’s comments on Libya to be “disgraceful.”

Brooks said he “wouldn’t go that far.” Here is the spirited exchange:

DAVID BROOKS: I think experienced hands would have waited a beat, rather than have that first Romney thing.

Second, when bad things are happening abroad, the American people want to see stability.

RUTH MARCUS: And they rally around the commander in chief.

DAVID BROOKS: And they do.

And, so, you don’t know who is dying or what is happening. Just show some stability. When the helicopters went down under Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan said, OK, I’m not going to use this politically.

That was the right instinct. Third — and this, I think, is deeply revealing of Romney — he is just not an ideological person. So, what principle is he standing for in this fight? The principle that thou shall not apologize.

That is not a principle. That is a tactic. That is a management theory of how to manage power.

And so trying to be an aggressive ideological person, but while not really being an ideological person, he has an ideological fit over management theory. And so that’s not…

JUDY WOODRUFF: But that point about apologizing, that has been a major part of the critique of Romney of the Obama administration.

538963311833118Post-Convention Politics, Foreign Affairs, and Fed's QE3New York Times' David Brooks and the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus discuss the week's top political news including the latest election polls, which show an overwhelming majority of voters have already decided their vote, plus analysis on Mitt Romney's critique of U.S. response to attacks in Libya and Fed's recent stimulus plan.2012-09-14 18:42:00disabled2279525380ol21SMTbe6Ytrue

2012 LINE ITEMS

A new automated survey from the left-leaning Public Policy Polling shows the president leading Romney in Virginia, 51 percent to 46 percent.

David Brody talked to Ryan about how his Catholic faith shaped his views on policy.

On Friday, the Obama campaign released a new TV ad on China. Watch it here. It began airing in Las Vegas on Saturday.

The Financial Times tracked the Obama app that allows you to track voters.

The Republican National Committee said Friday the party has made over 20 million voter contacts — more than the RNC’s 2008 voter contact total. “As of Saturday, Republicans had knocked on 16 times more doors and made eight times more phone calls than at this point in 2008. To date, we have 282 Victory Centers and 620 staff fanned out across the battleground states mobilizing supporters–many of them first time volunteers–on a daily basis. This is no doubt a top-notch operation,” the party argued in a press memo.

How would the automatic budget cuts outlined by the White House on Friday impact Medicare? Kaiser Health News explains that here.

The NewsHour explored how banks are doing four years after the bailouts.

Cantor announced on the floor that Sept. 21 will be the last day the House is in session, reports NewsHour coordinating producer Linda J. Scott. Lawmakers will return Nov. 13 for the lame-duck session.

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